


Who Am I?

by Nova_Fearnewood



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Episode: s01e22 Beginning of the End, F/M, Grant Ward POV, Silence, Spoilers, time to think
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-17
Updated: 2015-10-04
Packaged: 2018-01-25 09:29:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1643825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nova_Fearnewood/pseuds/Nova_Fearnewood
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When I was arrested, Coulson asked me, "Who are you?"<br/>Now that I'm in prison, I have time to think about that.<br/>Who am I?<br/>In theory, I can be anything now. I don't have any orders to adhere to except for the guards telling me what to do occasionally. Mainly they ask me if I want to read, draw, or do anything instead of staring at a wall for another day and losing just another little part of my sanity in the process.<br/>Who am I?<br/>(A series in which Grant Ward asks himself: "Who am I?")</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I Could Be An... Author

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a post on Tumblr.  
> I don't own a thing except for my ideas.

**I could be an author.**

* * *

 "You know that you'll drive yourself insane if you don't do something.", my guard tells me.

I nod, knowing that he's just saying something to make sure I haven't already crossed the line between sanity and insanity. 

You can't get accurate information out of an insane person.

I wasn't insane, I was just deep in thought about what Coulson asked me.

_"Who are you?"_

It was a baffling question really.

Now I was thinking of my answer. 

"Hey, do you want some paper and a pencil? Something to keep you occupied with...because you've been in here for almost three weeks now and you haven't done anything but stare at that wall all day.", the guard asked.

They always asked me those questions.

I nodded and they opened up the slot in my cell door before sliding a notebook and a pencil case in.

I opened up the book to a blank page and stared at it for a while. 

_Who are you?_

I wrote that down first and then I realized that I _am_ not anything.

I'm nothing more than a plain piece of canvas.

The only difference was that it wasn't my parents or Maynard or even John Garrett who held the palette and paintbrush.

I was the artist now.

In theory, I could be anything I wanted to be.

I wrote down my reply with the first words that came to mind.

_I could be an author._

I could tell my story in words on pages better than I could tell it out loud, especially since I was recovering from surgery on my larynx (which May had actually fractured) and was told not to speak.  

So I began writing. 

I wrote about my childhood and the abuse I faced. I wrote about my teenage years and how screwed up I was. I wrote about entering the military and then getting arrested when I tried to burn my house down with Maynard inside of it.

I wrote about how John Garrett sprung me out of jail and left me in the middle of nowhere with a change of clothes and a hunting dog named Buddy. I wrote about the daily struggle for survival that I faced in those first few months. I wrote about Buddy, personifying him as though he was talking to me during my isolation, after all, he was my first true friend.

I wrote about how it felt to see John Garret's smug face after so long, how I should have blown a hole in his head when I had the chance instead of letting him control me. I wrote about the last time I ever saw Buddy, how I attempted to spare his life but still felt my heart drop when I heard another gunshot echo from the direction of my campsite. I knew that Buddy had been shot by Garrett, but I didn't want to be seen as weak for having compassion.

I wrote about my return to society and the culture shock of it all. I wrote about my time at the SHIELD Spec Ops training facility and how demanding it was in comparison to any military training I had ever done.

I wrote about my first assignment, my first kill, and how it felt to take another person's life. It wasn't pleasant.

I wrote about all my missions, all the killing I did, every injury I sustained, and every mark I was forced to sleep with, even mentioning that I lost my virginity over a piece of sensitive intel that I got out of a mark. 

I wrote about all my deep undercover missions, including the fact that i was a Hydra sleeper agent.

I wrote about how Garrett treated me. He treated me better than my own parents did and I began looking up to him as a father figure, completely ignoring the nagging sensation in the back of my mind that told me he was bad because I was learning so much from him, much more than I had ever learned from my parents. He gave me my first birthday present,  Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War by Karl Marlantes. I read that book so much that the pages got dog-eared and worn, the spine got tiny creases from the nights when it laid on my chest after I had drifted off in the midst of reading it, and I could still quote it verbatim if someone asked me to.

But then I paused.

All I had left to write about was my time on Coulson's team.

It was time to write about Skye.

Just the thought of her made me wish that I had never joined Garrett.

Maybe, _just maybe_ , I could have just done my time in prison and gone on to hold a normal job eventually. Perhaps our paths would have crossed in that diner in LA. Maybe we could have had the shot at a normal life. We both had negative lives before, maybe we could have canceled each other out and been a good match for each other.

I had never been in love until I met her and I wasn't lying when I said that my feelings for her were true.

I realized that she was worth more to me than anything and that I would have taken a bullet for her if the need arose.  

She broke my heart when she recoiled from me after I confessed my feelings for her.

So I took a deep breath and I wrote about the eight months that I spent with Coulson, May, FitzSimmons, and Skye.

The team was the closest thing I had to a family and my betrayal hurt me.

I didn't want to be weak so I tried my hardest to push off whatever I had felt for them, but Skye stayed on my mind.  

I didn't stop until I had filled up two whole five-subject notebooks with my life story.

I closed it with the sentence,  _"Now I sit here in jail, wondering who else I could become, but knowing that all I'll ever want to be is the man whom Skye has given a second chance to make things right."_

 I looked up as my cell door opened and the guard came in. 

I stood and put my hands behind my head, facing the wall as I was cuffed and led down the hall to the interrogation room.

I would answer everything honestly.

I didn't owe Garrett a damned thing.


	2. I Could Be An...Honest Man

The guard led me into the interrogation room and cuffed me to the table before shackling my ankles to an iron ring in the floor.

I didn't care about being restrained, I knew I wouldn't even try to break out of here, wherever  _here_ happens to be.

I stared blankly at the one way glass, wondering who was on the other side and if they cared if I lived or died as long as I gave them what they wanted.

I just wondered how I was supposed to get through this interrogation if I couldn't speak or write. 

The other door opened and Coulson walked in.

I looked up at him and then went back to looking at my reflection.

I had lost weight and I was in desperate need of a clean shave and a haircut.

"Hello Ward.", he said as he sat down.

I inclined my head to him and he placed a tablet on the table, sliding it across to me.

"Here, that way you can type out your responses.", he said, "I'll see whatever you write on my phone.".

I looked at him and raised my wrists before rattling the restraints.

"I told them not to cuff your hands...", Coulson muttered before calling the guard back into the room to uncuff me from the table.

I rubbed my wrists after the cuffs were removed and sighed before picking up the tablet.

Coulson sat back down.

"Are you going to cooperate?", he asked.

I nodded.

"Good, let's begin. Is your full name Grant Douglas Ward?"

 _"Yes",_ I wrote.

"When did you become a sleeper agent for HYDRA?"

 _"I suppose I was always one because I was recruited by Garrett, but I was never given an assignment with an underlying mission that was put to me specifically by Garrett until I was placed on your team."_ , I replied.

"What was this mission?", Coulson asked.

 _"To_ _find out how you managed to survive getting speared in the chest and to report back with my findings."_

"How often did you report to him?"

_"Not often. I told him about how you said that Tahiti was a magical place, but that you suspected otherwise. I told him about Centipede and how we were trying to track down the Clairvoyant and how Ian Quinn was behind this in some way. I asked him if he knew anything about a Clairvoyant or about Ian Quinn or Centipede. He didn't tell me much except that I had to keep looking."_

"Looking for what?"

_"Anything that would matter to him. I didn't know the full story. I didn't know he was dying. I knew he was out for revenge, but I didn't think that he'd keep me in the dark so I would be easier to manipulate and more willing to comply..."_

"What parts of the plan did he keep from you?"

_"I never knew that HYDRA was everywhere in SHIELD, I didn't know that there were plans to overthrow all of SHIELD, that there were three Helicarriers at the Triskelion that had weaponry on board meant to ensure global domination through a method that called for full submission or instant death. There was a lot that I didn't know about. I never knew that Mike Peterson was going to be turned into Deathlok. I never knew that Garrett was responsible for the murders of the two agents he was mentoring. I had no clue that Garrett was the Clairvoyant or that he was working in secret with Raina or the people at Cybertek. I also didn't know that Agent Sitwell was HYDRA."_

"Anything else?"

I nodded.

_"Garrett never told me that he planned on Skye being shot. Hindsight being twenty-twenty, I suppose he did it because he knew how Skye was like your protege and that you were heavily invested with her because of how she was an added risk that you were more than willing to be responsible for. He knew that I was her SO and he asked a lot of questions about her. He must have read the debrief about how I rescued her at Ian Quinn's mansion during that first mission, so he connected the pieces and assumed that Skye was my weakness."_

"What do you mean by 'weakness'? What does Agent Skye have to do with your betrayal?"

 _"'Weakness'_ _meaning that I had feelings for Skye and, according to Garrett, feelings were weaknesses. He thought I wasn't capable of doing my job with her around and so he had Ian Quinn shoot her. By shooting Skye, he gave us the motivation to find the GH325 serum and defy orders, he punished me for my weaknesses, and our defiance gave him a reason to  join us on our quest to find a cure for Skye. He weaseled his way onto the team and into the Guest House that day so that he could get his hands on the cure, one that would fix the problem with his parts and help him to live again. He played all of us and then he used Skye as a guinea pig to see firsthand the effects of the GH325 serum. Skye was an unexpected variable that I had to work with. To Garrett, Skye was just another person I had to fool. To me, she was the only person I wanted to be honest with."_

"Are you sure?"

I nodded.

"How can I trust you?", Coulson asked, "All of this seems very far-fetched."

I typed back.

 

_"I have nothing to gain if I lie to you. Garrett is dead so he can't punish me or hurt me anymore. I'm your prisoner, so you decide my fate. I don't have a clue where I am right now, so it would be foolish to try and escape, besides, you would just find me again anyway, so what's the point? I can't even speak, for God's sake! All I have is my word and I know that doesn't mean anything to you right now, but I have no reason to lie to any of you."_

"Be honest with me, what are you planning to get out of cooperating with us? What is your reward? What's in it for you?"

I shrugged.

_"A second chance to be a semi-decent human being...I want to prove to all of you that I am not just a traitorous bastard and murderer. In the long run, I hope to regain your trust... I also wrote my life story out in two notebooks... they are back in my cell if you want to read them. I swear to you that everything I know is in those books... I suppose it could be my testimony or my signed confession, it depends on how you want to look at it."_

"I will take those books and read them carefully. I will also give them to a therapist."

I nodded.

I suppose some mental help would be nice to have.

I knocked on the table and typed a question of my own:

_"How are FitzSimmons?"_

Coulson read my question and sighed.

"Fitz and Simmons are working on their own projects. Fitz has lost some memory function, some speech function, and he is slowly but surely learning how to use his hands again. They aren't on speaking terms and I think that, given the chance, both of them would want to make you suffer as revenge for you trying to kill them.", Coulson replied, his voice hard and icy.

 _"I just want you to know that those pods were their best chance at survival. Those pods were meant to float and are used in all SHIELD fleet units, especially on board in the submarines. They were meant to float to safety. Their pod must've malfunctioned. If I didn't eject them, they would have been killed. I couldn't defend them because it would have been me vs everyone else on that plane and I couldn't have done that with two untrained agents in my care. I didn't mean for this to happen, I swear."_ , I typed back. 

Coulson shook his head.

"I'll have more to ask you as I get more intel from my HYDRA mole, but until then, I just have one more question.", Coulson said before pausing, "You got all your missions from your superiors, how many of them had underlying assignments?"

_"Almost all of them."_

"Did you know which ones were for HYDRA and which ones were for SHIELD? We need to track down these people, so some names would be nice.", Coulson asked.

I paused. 

How would I put this into words?

I began typing but then I deleted and started over a few times.

Finally, I got it right.

_"I have no clue who I was working for. Both sides had me do some really terrible things to some really innocent people, after a while, it all blends together and becomes a blur. I just completed my missions, submitted my reports, kept my eyes down and avoided pissing people off."_

Coulson nodded at me.

"Have you thought about what I asked you? Have you found out who you are yet?"

I shook my head.

 _"I'm working on that."_ , I typed.

Coulson nodded and then said, "We'll be in touch, I hope you feel better soon.", and left the room.

I sat in silence for about fifteen minutes then my guard came, unshackled me from the floor, cuffed me again and sent me back to my cell.

There, on my bed, where my books had been, was a note.

I opened it up and read it.

_"Ward~ You really need to shave. Your honesty is appreciated. I still hate your guts, but your cooperation is necessary for our success. I hope you find yourself in there. PS: Your cooperation will have its rewards. ~ S"_

I folded the note up and put it under my pillow before staring at the wall until my guard asked me if I wanted another book.

_Sure, what the hell...Maybe I'll try my hand at art next._

 

 


End file.
